Original Article

By

Peter Amato*

“Political language…is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure
wind.”

-George Orwell, 1946

1.

Human conduct can be considered from a variety of
standpoints, some of which are more concerned with its structural, universal,
and abstract dimensions, and some of which are more focused on concrete
practices and particularities. But inquiry into human conduct that loses sight
of the interconnection between these dimensions misrepresents either, or both. I
think something like this is often happening below the surface of the seemingly
innocuous and widely accepted distinction between “ethics” and “morals,”
that is frequently taken for granted in philosophy today. Yet, like “time,”
“democracy,” and “being,” “ethics” and “morality” are terms we
all seem to know how to use, but which provoke confusion and ambiguity when we
turn to define them.

I suggest that confusion and ambiguity surrounding the
distinction between the “ethical” and “moral” are clues to a broader
inadequacy in our thinking about conduct. Implicit in our talk of “ethics”
and “morality” as separate or separable lies a misunderstanding about what
ethnographers and linguists refer to as the etic and emic dimensions
of systems of meaning and meaningful conduct. [2] As I will suggest, to regard
what philosophers often seem to mean when they use the term “ethics” as
possible reflects a desire to disregard the inescapably emic dimensions
of conduct-that is, its meaning as understood from the perspective of the
concrete, situated participants themselves. Mutatis mutandis, what passes
for “morality” is often really an ersatz etics of conduct-a fiction
predicated on the assumption that conduct can be understood abstractly from the
perspective of no one in particular. Confusion about where “ethics” ends and
“morality” begins, in other words, helps us to locate a kind of perspectival
fault-line in conduct: On one side of this fault, pressing with tremendous
force, is the compelling power of abstract, universal, and objective dimensions.
On the other side, pressing against these, is the equally powerful force of the
particular, concrete, situated human experience at the location of conduct. To
carry out the metaphor, we understand very little about the geography of human
conduct by denying the power and importance of either of these forces. And yet,
doing so today is as common as making distinctions between “ethics” and “morals.”

Thinking about ethics and morality in light of the etic/emic
distinction will help us understand the benefit to an over-all conception of
human nature of an integrative picture of “ethics” and “morals.” I think
such a picture can be developed on the basis of a hermeneutical conception of
conduct in which it always is seen as having both etic and emic
dimensions. To begin with, it will be helpful to recognize what ethnographers
and linguists have usually held fast to in using such heuristic distinctions as
that between emic and etic: that these dimensions of conduct can
only be considered separately at our peril. If the distinction of morality and
ethics is useful at all to maintain in the future, it must cease to reinforce
the illegitimate and destructive dichotomy between two essential and inescapable
dimensions of meaningful conduct. The hope of reconstructing commonly-accepted
but ambiguous and paradoxical notions of the “ethical” and the “moral”
along the lines of a more integrated picture of human conduct is that both the emic
and etic dimensions of conduct can be understood in a more subtle and
less abstract way than is usually suggested in discussions about ethics and
morality.

2.

The terms “ethics” and “morals” are distinguished in
some generally recognized ways in philosophy. The “ethical” is usually
identified with the social and cultural life-world in contrast with deliberative
judgment and choice, which are normally thought of as connected with “morality.”
Many recognize the importance of both in conceptualizing conduct. Yet,
ambiguities persist in how these terms are used, which can obscure important
aspects of their relatedness and importance to each other. In particular,
ambiguous usage conceals the degree to which under the cover of “modernity,”
the ethical aspects tend to be ignored and under-represented in discourse
concerned with conduct.

In a recent Dictionary of Philosophy, the entry for
“Ethics” notes that, “[m]uch of what is called moral philosophy is
[actually] normative or applied ethics….[I]n many contexts
moral/ethical…are…[used as] synonyms, [although] writers frequently use the
two words in different or contrasting senses.” [3] The meanings and uses of these
“different [and] contrasting” senses are developed in a separate entry for
“Morality.” [4] In an entry for “Ethics,” a widely-used philosophy
encyclopedia further illustrates the scope and acceptance of ambiguity regarding
the distinction between ethics and morality:

No generally accepted terminology for making the
necessary distinctions [pertaining to the various types of questions
belonging to 'Ethics'] has yet emerged; but in this article we shall
distinguish between (1) morals, (2) descriptive ethics, and (3) ethics….Thus,
ethics (in the narrow sense) stands to morals in much the same relation as
does the philosophy of science to science. The student of ethics will
nevertheless have to get used to a variety of terminologies; he will find
plain 'ethics' used for what we have just called 'morals';…and so on. [5]

These entries suggest that the distinction between “ethics”
and “morals” is meaningful, yet, difficult to draw on the basis of accepted
usage by contemporary philosophers.

This ambiguity certainly reflects ambiguous and problematic
aspects of late-twentieth-century philosophy. Analytic Philosophy long ago
placed questions about systems of value and ideas of “the good life” aside
as undecidable and in Hume's and Ayers' largely dismissive sense, “metaphysical.”
In the Twentieth Century, it became commonplace to speak as if the useful parts
of philosophy about conduct could be restricted to only its recognizably
moral-practical content, dealing with the meaningfulness, systematicity, and
coherence of discourse about obligation and the rules we think we should follow.
[6] More broadly speaking, Continental and Analytic philosophers alike have
tended to converge on the elusiveness of clear and compelling conclusions of a
philosophical nature concerning matters of value in general. One can speak of a
general hesitation before universalizing discourses as characteristic of the
late-modern anxiety about narratives and systems of value. [7] Philosophy is today
marked by a seriousness concerning how such discourses intersect with
particularity and situatedness, and whether or not and how universalizing
discourses should even be involved in practical reasoning. This sensitivity has
naturally had a strong impact on philosophies of conduct.

In addition, college curricula increasingly ask ethicists and
moral philosophers to present an idea of ethics to students, often under the
rubric “applied ethics,” that is geared toward deliberations concerning the
practical circumstances in which standards of value are applied. This approach
is recommended as a way to help students understand the relevance of ethics to
their professional and career concerns by presenting issues in the most
practical terms possible. But since “applied ethics” is fundamentally about
practical moral reasoning, paying its closest attention to specific contexts in
which moral reasoning is defined with respect to definite content, a hidden and
often unrecognized result of so-called “applied ethics” is to obscure ethics
by teaching that only morality matters. Intentionally or not, this can easily be
misinterpreted by students as suggesting that moral reasoning may proceed along
as if there were no serious questions about recognizably “ethical” matters
connected with its deliberations. But, one does not remove the theoretical or
philosophical dimensions of moral reasoning by calling a class “applied.”
One may threaten, however, to make an ethical forest look much more like a
collection of moral trees.

Unsettling developments like these are sometimes excused on
the basis of the idea that the “ethical” assumptions of background cultural
traditions cannot be made the subject matter of philosophical questioning. Thus
it is that “ethics,” understood as pertaining to questions about “the good
life,” is associated with a cultural horizon or life-world of regularities in
a people's practices, institutions, and expressions. It is in this sense that we
speak broadly of a form of life as having an ethos, a system of values or
standards which are implicit in the regular, institutional, and practical
activities and judgements of a people. “Morality,” to this view, is where
things get philosophically interesting. But if one takes it for granted that “ethics”
refers to an unquestionable background framework, then it is likely to appear
unobjectionable that ethics be regarded as a largely irrational blindspot stuck
to the back of conduct. This attitude is especially strongly reflected in the
works of many in the more-or-less Kantian tradition today, especially perhaps
the critical theorists, and discourse “ethicists” for whom the historical,
cultural dimensions of practice are pointedly problematic.

But there are both historical and conceptual problems with
this widespread perspective. First, it is important to note that the term we use
in English, “ethics,” has never simply meant ethos. As P.C. Smith
notes, for example, “ethics,” as translated from the German sitten,
contains dimensions involving both our notion of “convention” and “custom”
but also linked with a sense of “rightness” that is frequently lost in
translation or forgotten. [8] For Smith, it is important to recognize that the
German still carries the sense of terms which in Greek were usually used in the
same context, like aischros, (“shameful, ugly”), and more clearly
moral terms like to deon, and dikaios. The “ethical,” in this
sense, has usually in the history of philosophy referred to something more than
the unreflective, precritical cultural background framework of values and
priorities, involving a kind of practice of reflection upon standards and values
that were otherwise implicit. It thus involves a reflective relationship toward ethos.
Although both “ethics” and “ethos” refer to the standards and
values of a community, the difference between them involves a recognition that
taking a different stance or attitude toward values changes them. Ethics
involves the values of a culture insofar as they are subject to reflection, when
the ethos of a community is thematized reflectively and thus as standards
and values it can be regarded as action-guiding: By ethos we refer to
values or standards as providing a description of normality. By ethics we
refer to the practice of holding our values in a different way-either regarding
them as right and worth continuing or as wrong and requiring change.

But, changes in the ethos of a people-a possibility
always hovering around ethics, requires changes in mores; in departures
from normalcy and the establishment of new patterns of conduct. All cultural
change involves changes in normalcy, by definition-departures from patterns of
activity which could be formulated in terms of the mores and ethos
of a people. But not all such change results from conscious reflection, and a
still smaller category results from expressly normative and principled impulses,
decisions, and choices. In other words, changes in more-ality and ethos
may result from completely unintended and unconscious shifts in practice that
have no reflective dimensions to speak of. Thus, when we talk about such changes
as changes in morality and ethics, we mean something other than unreflective or
accidental behavior. We refer in this case to conduct, which has an
essentially reflective dimension. Ethics, as reflection upon conduct, thus
involves thematizing and developing criteria by which to assess existing and
possible rules and norms. Where mores become the object of such thematic
assessment, they are reflectively taken-up as a matter of concern. They become morals:
i.e., the subject of a conversation about the relationship between our actual
conduct and our cherished values in definite circumstances.

Morality is thus an orientation toward practice in contexts
where judgement is necessary to guide choice in light of standards of value
independent of normalcy in principle. It is distinguished from
pre-critical cultural mores and ethos in that it is accepted on
some reflective grounds and thus defensible as right, rather than on the grounds
of mere convention, efficiency, or prudence. As morality it identifies a concern
for the responsibilities and obligations we bear as persons in light of
standards that are themselves reflective, and so also essentially matters for
conversation. In other words, while rooted in cultural practices, neither morals
nor ethics merely spring forth fully-formed, unreflective, static. Morality is
the realization of ethics, which is to say, of reflection upon ethos;
it exists insofar as conduct is made the subject of a conversation that involves
us in a constant re-interpretation of our standards and ourselves. That is to
say, the existence of morality reflects our continuing need to re-interpret ourselves
in light of experience.

Ethics and morals are thus not just inter-related but
mutually determining and realizing. In other words, without viable moral
conversation in which to become so animated or realized, ethical values and
standards exist only potentially, as literally utopian ideals, reflecting
possible future conversations. Without a real dialogue, i.e., an ethics so
animated, what may appear to be moral conversation may actually reflect the
implicit conceptual reduction of conduct to mere behavior, of conversation to
mere discourse, of engaged concern about real priorities to disengaged and
finally unethical rule-following-the potentially most deadly form practical
reasoning can assume-rationalization.

Ethics and morality are thus closely interconnected with
culture and history, but emerge from a stance of reflection upon them.
Particular ethical systems and moral rules must be understood as related to
their particular historical and cultural contexts. Yet, the reflective
dimensions essential to ethical standards and moral rules suggest that rational,
dialogical criteria pertaining to reflective conversation about conduct would
apply. Developing such criteria might begin with identifying moments of
possibility and choice in the real and enduring structures of our actual lives,
since conduct is never merely the repetition or reproduction of those
structures. Where ethos is made the object of thematic scrutiny,
practices we have taken for granted become matters of concern; my conduct and
yours become problematic. Morality reflects the ongoing necessity to
re-interpret ourselves and our ethical systems in terms of their relevance to
the ongoing conversation of life.

3.

In developing and re-connecting the ethical and moral in
contrast with notions of ethos and mores, I have presented them
above as aspects of a broader conversation about conduct, as a function of
which, the standards implicit in practices can become thematized in our
reflective determination of norms. Since this conception emerged from a
consideration of conduct as a form of social-cultural behavior, it is not
surprising to find that ethnographers have anticipated the central contrast from
which we saw it emerge. Ethnographers commonly make a distinction between the etic
and emic dimensions of the study of cultural practices, which reflects
the difference between the structural and reflective dimensions of
meaning. [9] In this section I directly consider how this distinction provides a
helpful way to further clarify the ethical and moral dimensions of conduct as I
have been developing them here.

The etic/emic distinction is, at its core, a
distinction between meaningful things and the usually hidden or implicit
structures believed to be essential to their decipherment. Meaningful behavior
occurs in a context set by a stable, structured, 'grammatical' system, according
to which features capable of conveying and conferring meaning are organized and
arranged into meaningful actions and utterances. The study of meaningful
activity presents ethnographers with the constant need to recognize the
difference between the elements and components of meaning and meanings
themselves. The ethnographer anticipates that cultural activity has a 'double
nature': When the meaning of institutions, practices, and beliefs is considered
independent of the participants' ideas and beliefs, we say they are considered
from an etic perspective. On the other hand, it is necessary to recognize
that the institutions, practices, and beliefs of a people are not only an
abstract system, but real living features of a culture. To this extent,
practices are not merely structurally capable of conveying meaning, but they
actually mean. This makes them a different kind of object-one whose
subjective element is irreducibly present.

The ethnographer observes a ritual ceremony and describes the
clothing, movements, and expressions of all its participants in detail. From the
standpoint typically assumed by the scientific observer, these elements can be
sorted out and re-ordered so as to derive a new meaning not given in or by the
performance itself or its participants. The meaning of the event intended by the
scientific observer will be cast in terms of measured empirical observations, in
what that observer might call 'neutral,' 'objective' language. But the etic
dimensions of observed behavior are not simply to be identified with the
'objective,' 'empirical,' 'causal,' account that might be given by a typical
western scientist. Etic and emic dimensions structure all observed
human behavior, since it always can be interpreted in terms that are independent
of what its participants say. In other words, the etic meaning of an
event, as described from the standpoint of a western scientific system of
meaning, is, in a non-trivial sense, also really an emic account
reflecting a western observer's practice of interpretation. 'Independent of
what their practice means to participants,' is a category that belongs to
our local system of meaning, which we call the scientific observer's
perspective. But, boil the meaningful world down to formal constituents and what
one has is formal constituents of meaning. We can utter nothing meaningful about
the practice without reconstituting it in our terms, emically. In other
words, the etic meaning of an event, as described from the standpoint of
a western scientific system of meanings, is, in a non-trivial sense, also really
an emic account or a westerner's practise of interpretation, from a
standpoint outside its system of meanings. 'Independent of what participants
in this practice actually tend to think and say,' is a category belonging to
our local systems of meaning, reflecting the core of the scientific observer's
perspective. But, 'as it appears from within the horizon of local
interpretations and practices,' is a category that must also be regarded as
applicable to the system of meanings familiar to the scientific observer as to
anyone else.

The distinction of etic and emic aspects of
meaning suggests a parallel that I believe can assist the re-articulation of
ethics and morality in a broader philosophy of conduct: the cultural values and
unreflective attitudes with which ethics begins provide a structural framework
in terms of which the reflective expression and conversation carried out as
ethical-moral discussion occurs. In this sense, a tradition of conversation
about conduct facilitates its own continuation by opening itself up for
reflection; i.e., for the creation out of the 'grammar and syntax' of a
structuring past new utterances that make unanticipated sense in present usage.
Any cultural world contains etic structural features out of which
practices and beliefs endure and structure from one generation to the next. But
cultural reproduction is not merely the repetition of the speech of the
ancestors. Still less could it be a replication of its own objectivity, or a
formal recreation of the structures that confer meanings without meaning
something all along the way. Cultural life is a dynamic between relatively
enduring structures and new meaningful utterances formed from them. Culture and ethos
are the relatively enduring structures in reflection upon which ethical and
moral meanings are instituted with an urgency and originality that is always
marked by their real circumstances.

So morality and ethics are neither simply synonymous, nor
antithetical. The distinction between ethics and ethos was offered above
as a starting point toward clarifying how culture and tradition relate to ethics
as the ground upon which it reflects. This suggested a view of morality as
conversation about conduct, realizing reflection upon relatively enduring
ethical values in which the prevailing morality of a time reflects a consensus
about how generally held values should be interpreted and applied under local
conditions. But, from a hermeneutical perspective, such conventions reflect
merely a moment in an ongoing conversation that must continually re-interpret
its own relevance and meaning in relation to new, real contingencies. There is
thus a continual interpretive demand understood historically as ethical debate
driven by experience and history, as new questions and choices force us to
reflect anew on the priorities implicit in our choices. Moral reflection and
debate are thus dialectically related with the values they call upon us to
instantiate and realize, or overthrow.

This way of thinking about ethics and morals allows us to
identify ethical values as historically conditioned and only ever relatively,
falsely permanent. If ethical systems of values and ideas of the good exist only
in our conversation about what to do, as I suggest, they live and die in the
practices and institutions whose results at any given moment they are. This
means ethical values are extremely tenuous as well as tenacious and persistent,
just like culture. Culture passes from person to person through the most subtle
of gestures, and carves a niche in each mind of millions through vast and
monumental creations. Yet, existing only in the minds, actions, and artifacts of
persons, its venue is history, and it thus depends on human choices and actions.
It is always open to reflection and critique, because without them it has no
life.

The contrast of ethics and morality with ethos and mores
shows that the ought is essential to conduct, for it arises upon
reflection, in a stance of self awareness and assessment of practices and of
ourselves as actors for whom conduct matters. A commonplace way to say this, I
think, is that from an ethical or a moral perspective we consider ourselves responsible
for our actions. And yet, the ought arises from reflection upon temporary
but relatively enduring meaning-constituting structures through which we
constitute the meaning(s) of our conduct in conversation as moral or immoral. To
this extent, ethics and morals emerge in the recognition that our conduct is
meaningful, as an attempt to specify that meaning and its conditions-or those of
the various choices we sort through in conduct.

Notes

1. An early version of this paper was published as, “The
Invisibility of Ethics and the Hermeneutics of Conduct,” Budhi: A Journal
of Thought and Culture, 4: 1, October, 2000, 67-78. Also, the ideas
developed in the present version of the paper benefited greatly from discussion
at the 35th Annual Conference On Value Inquiry, held at the University of North
Dakota at Grand Forks, in May, 2003.

2. Kenneth Pike is generally regarded as responsible for
establishing the etic/emic distinction in his ethnographic work during
the 1950's and developing the idea in Language in Relation to a Unified
Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, 2nd revised edition, Mouton: the
Hague and Paris, 1967.

5.The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and
Philosophers, edited by J. O. Urmson and Jonathan Ree, (New York: Routledge,
1995), 100-1. This encyclopedia does not contain entries for either “Morality,”
or “Moral Theory.”

6. The traditional wisdom considered this period as dominated
by meta-ethics over normative ethics.

7. Recent attempts to re-invigorate Aristotelian “Virtue
Ethics” I believe have been more about choice than character; more about
decision-making and judgement than the propriety of ends and aims. In some ways
Habermas' “Discourse Ethics” seems more of a moral theory than an ethical
one, even by his own definitions.

9. A careful discussion of the meanings of and controversies
about the etic/emic distinction in anthropology can be found in Marvin
Harris, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times, (California: AltaMira
Press, 1999), especially chapter 2, pages 31-48. Harris particularly warns
against confusing the etic/emic distinction with the commonplace
distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, since this identifies
objectivity solely with the outsider perspective of the student or scientist of
culture. But participants themselves have an idea about how the world is
structured independent of themselves and their own subjectivity. This means that
the outsider and the insider both have etic and emic
meaning-structures. Again, this returns the distinction to its roots in
linguistics: the etic should be thought of as a classificatory
structuring system or code which confers meaning, but does not actually 'mean'
itself, like the phonetics of spoken language. This 'objective' structure
transcends and links all competent language users. Yet, all so linked remain
speakers, with definite things to say and to mean.